a multi-disciplinary dialog
June wrote recently about the story we tell of our personal history in art. On a smaller scale, there’s the story of a particular idea or even a single piece. There may not be a coherent tale in most cases, but it happens that there is (or I think there is) in the case of several photographs I made a few days ago.
Stone People at Old Mission Peninsula, fully submerged in the Great Lake a decade or so ago, are now exposed,
An ideal blog post should be a nutritious snack like a granola bar: a little filling but not too heavy, containing a few sweet nuggets, and hopefully good for you. Well, you know how there’s usually a little spilled flour, a sticky spot of honey, and a few escaped raisins lying around after a cooking stint? And possibly a few items from earlier efforts? Welcome to my clean-up post.
One stray ingredient is one I deliberately left out of last week’s post on some modern Chinese abstract artists, for reasons of space and time. But Che Chuang’s painting of a head, shown above, struck a real chord with me. It reminded me strongly of two heads of my own that have appeared in these pages. The level of abstraction, original color, and even shape are not so very different.
Musings on photography recently talked about the idea of cliché. Below is a country lane that happens to be pregnant with possibility.
Dapples are difficult wherever they are. Lately, I’ve been trying to catch shadows on a stream, without great success. But according to Hopkins, we should be grateful nonetheless:
“Pied Beauty” (1877)
Gerard Manley HopkinsGlory be to God for dappled things–
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced–fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change: Praise Him.
or
As mentioned last week, I’ve been re-examining my photography in terms of some ideas from Japanese aesthetics. In practical terms, that means I’ve been going out and looking differently at subjects. For example, I’ve tried to be more aware of views involving negative space along Sourdough Trail, my main project of the moment.
